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LONDON, England and STAMFORD, Conn. – WWE today announced that tickets will be available Friday, June 29, for eight Live Events that will be taped for NXT UK, a new United Kingdom series featuring the greatest competitors from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The U.K. Championship, plus two new championships — the U.K. Women’s Championship and U.K. Tag Team Championship — will be on the line at the following NXT UK events:

Saturday, July 28, and Sunday, July 29, at the Corn Exchange, Cambridge

Saturday, Aug. 25, and Sunday, Aug. 26, as part of Insomnia, the U.K.’s biggest gaming festival, at NEC Birmingham

“The U.K. has an amazing talent base and incredibly passionate fans that are deserving of their own showcase,” said Paul “Triple H” Levesque, WWE Executive Vice President, Talent, Live Events & Creative. “This is the next step in our ongoing strategy to create localized content and further develop our brand globally.”

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I’ll be getting tickets for the Liverpool shows. It sounds cool, I just worry this means Pete Dunne won’t be appearing on the regular NXT shows going forward. After his recent performances, I was hoping they’d start using him as a regular. Takeover matches with Ricochet, Velveteen Dream, Black, Cole, etc. is far more preferable than having him mixing it up with guys like Wolfgang and Jordan Devlin or whoever.

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Speaking of Pete Dunne, can we please ensure this is a NO SPOILER ZONE for tonight's and tomorrow's Albert Hall tapings please? I'm really looking forward to watching this next week. Thanks in advance.

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I really don't know how to feel about this. On one hand, it's a bigger entryway into the WWE system for a lot of guys. This means they'll have access to better paydays, a contract, the chance to make a bigger impression and networking opportunities.

On the downside, it's WWE's further monopolization of the BritWres scene. Guys and gals no longer being allowed to work the likes of Rev Pro, Defy and whoever else is on the NJPW/ITV side of the fence. Making fans choose between who they are going to support. And we all know that WWE doesn't play nicely with others.

I hope my negative feelings about this are wrong and WWE's active involvement actually shines a spotlight, purposefully or indirectly, on the fantastic range of promotions on offer in the UK.

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Or, playing Devil's advocate here, maybe having the top tier of UK talent move up to WWE-only clears the way for the next wave of UK talent to step up? A dip into the Wrestling Events page shows a lot of the same names headlining shows all over the country.

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Maybe so, but those names are going to be on the WWE's UK radar too and they'll quickly be snapped up. Also, how many fans go to indy events based on which WWE-UK guys are appearing? What happens when your local fed can no longer afford to book them or, worse, are prohibited from using them? There is still going to be a clear divide in who can work for who. Have a look a history book lads, and tell me how WWF did business when it came to the territories in the 80's? What happened to them in the end?

It's okay to have some trepidation about this. It's not all sunflowers and rainbows but it's not all doom and gloom either.

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On the downside, it's WWE's further monopolization of the BritWres scene. Guys and gals no longer being allowed to work the likes of Rev Pro, Defy and whoever else is on the NJPW/ITV side of the fence. Making fans choose between who they are going to support. And we all know that WWE doesn't play nicely with others.

I hope my negative feelings about this are wrong and WWE's active involvement actually shines a spotlight, purposefully or indirectly, on the fantastic range of promotions on offer in the UK.

Its disappointing to see this happen now tbh. The World of Sport show is potentially the biggest development to hit British Wrestling in decades. Exposure on one of the country’s biggest TV networks, it doesn’t get any bigger than this.

The NXT promotion will be broadcast to the fanbase that’s already hardcore enough to fork out a tenner a month for a dedicated wrestling streaming service.

I do worry that pretty much every development in wrestling these days is aimed towards pleasing its existing audience (that’s pretty much dwindled to its mid 90’s hardcore) and not to be accessible to a more casual fanbase. That goes for the workrate over storyline style that pretty much every promotion is adopting, to business moves like this.